Strange Darkness Comes Creeping
by Slytherincesss
Summary: He looks as forsaken as she feels. Year six finds Pansy Parkinson's parents missing and Severus Snape preparing to keep his Unbreakable Vow for Draco Malfoy. Preparing for the end, Snape and Pansy offer each other bleak comfort. SS/PP DM/PP *HET*


_Strange Darkness Comes Creeping_

"Hush!"

When she was a first year, Severus Snape had quickly noticed - as any proper, attentive Head of House would have - that Pansy Parkinson was not just slightly mental.

"Miss Parkinson," he had asked her, when she had been eleven, "pray tell, what are you doing?"

He'd found her crouched in the corner of the Potions dungeon one evening after dinner. She was face-in to the wall and was still young enough that she could squat effortlessly on a whim. She'd folded into herself, her bum resting against the heels of her sturdy school shoes, knees jutting upward, and had tucked her hands underneath her impertinent chin, leaning immodestly into the shadows veiling the dusty corner.

"Watching spiders," she said impatiently. "Shh!"

"You shall not shush me again or there shall be points from Slytherin. Why are you wearing a McMonocle?"

She glanced up at him, the magical monocle purchased from Zonko's (a ridiculous product invented by Minerva's half-wit brother Angus McGonagall, a fact which Snape would remind the Head of Gryffindor of at any opportunity) hanging from her left eye like a flaccid telescope. "When the fly's finally dead I want to pull off its wings."

"Why wait?" Snape asked dryly, folding his arms into his robes.

"Sir?"

"As you were," said Snape, turning. "Do not prioritise folly over your Potions essay, however."

"I've done it already," she said, sounding accomplished.

"Do it again," he ordered. "If your prior efforts are any indication, it would behoove you to."

The McMonocle whirred then and the telescopic lens straightened and grew. "It's dead!" she said, and picked away at the fly's deadly silken shroud.

"Professor Snape," Pansy whinged the next year, standing before his desk with Gregory Goyle, "Greg's killed Millicent!"

Severus looked up from his writings, his quill freezing mid-word. "_What_?"

"I didn't mean to!" The great lump protested vigorously. Goyle's round face screwed up as if the boy were about to cry, his extra chin quivering alarmingly. "Pansy's the one who left her alone on the chesterfield. I didn't see her-"

"Greg sat on her," Pansy interrupted, blubbering dramatically, leaking twelve-year-old tears everywhere, "and he killed her! She's all squashed and dead and oozing!"

Severus laid down his quill. "You mean to say Miss Bulstrode is _dead_?" Would his charges ever cease interrupting his evening quiet time? "Miss Bulstrode is dead, right now in the common room?"

"No!" Pansy bawled, stomping her little foot. "Not Millicent! I mean _Millicent_!"

"Miss Parkinson, explain yourself at once, and succinctly at that, before I toss you into the corridor and take points from Slytherin for your unsolicited nonsense." Severus stood and rounded the desk and peered down at his two ignoble charges. "Mr. Goyle?"

"She left Millicent out," Goyle accused, pointing a fat finger at Pansy. "So, blame her! She's a terrible- _Oof_!"

"Stop it." Snape drew his wand as a reminder to them both and was satisfied when Pansy fell back, having kicked Goyle squarely in the leg. "Does Miss Bulstrode require medical attention?"

"She's talking about her stupid streeler!" Goyle whinged, holding his shin. "Millicent's her dumb pet!"

Snape considered Pansy reprovingly. "You've been keeping a streeler?" he asked, his voice dropping dangerously.

Pansy looked up at him fearfully, her eyes leaky and bright. "I named her Millicent," she said weakly. "Because Millicent's my best friend and I love her, just like I love Millicent!" She wrung her small hands. "Millicent my streeler, I mean. And Millicent my friend . . . And now Greg's gone and killed her!"

"Let me understand that you have come to me about a streeler - a pet you have named Millicent?"

"That's right," she said tearfully. "Millicent."

"You came to me at the beginning of the term asking if you might purchase a streeler and I implicitly denied your request," Snape said icily, letting his dark anger roll over her. "You ignored my direction, Miss Parkinson?"

"You- you said I couldn't _buy_ a streeler," said Pansy, her shoulders squaring subtly under Snape's dangerous gaze. "But, you didn't say I couldn't keep a streeler if someone happened to purchase one for me."

"I shan't tolerate semantic deception," Snape said, his mouth twisting into a frown. "Ten points from Slytherin, and you shall be responsible for replacing the sofa in the common room." He could only imagine the condition of the furniture in the wake of an oozing, squashed streeler, its venom sacs undoubtedly obliterated by Gregory Goyle's ample backside

"Professor Snape?" Goyle inquired, aggrieved, rubbing at his arse through his trousers. "I itch!"

"Go to the matron Pomfrey," Snape ordered, as Pansy began working herself up again. "Tell her you've sat on a streeler and you're in need of a Murtlap soak." He paid no further attention to Goyle as the boy lumbered from the room, instead focusing his attention on his weepy, petulant girl charge. "Why would you disobey me, Miss Parkinson?"

"Millicent's shell made for a fine night lamp," she managed to respond. "It made the dark not so bad!"

"A regular nightlight would have accomplished the same goal," Severus said.

"I want a streeler! It changes colours!"

"It's easy enough to get a lamp that changes colours on the hour, Miss Parkinson."

"But," she said, looking at Snape as if she were disappointed in him that he didn't understand, "I wanted a _streeler_."

Snape sighed, exasperated, understanding Pansy was in the throes of a stubborn fixation, in which only the desired object would do. "You may not have a streeler and I forbid you from procuring a replacement." He stared down into her resentful little face.

"Fine. Can I go?" she asked, shifting her dark gaze, her lip quivering angrily.

"You may." Snape returned to his chair and retook his seat. He dipped his quill and resumed writing, the delicate fluffs of his plume waving gently as he finished the sentence which had earlier been interrupted.

There came a small, miserable sniffle.

Snape glanced up. "What?"

"I don't have a night lamp," Pansy said, in a small voice.

"Borrow one." He again resumed his writing.

But she merely stood there.

Snape again looked up. "Can you not borrow a night lamp, Miss Parkinson? Is there no-one you might ask?"

"I suppose," she said, twisting the sleeve of her jumper with her finger, round and round. "Professor Snape?"

"What _is_ it?" He laid down his quill with a sharp snap, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "I've work to do and I shan't tolerate your ridiculousness any longer."

"Do _you_ have a night lamp I could borrow?"

Snape stared at Pansy for a long moment, unsure whether to laugh or punish her further. "I do not," he said finally. The corner of his mouth twitched.

"You're no help," she saidangrily. Turning, she huffed toward the door.

Snape noticed one of her knee socks had fallen down her calf and was bunched messily at her ankle. "Miss Parkinson," he said, directing his attention back to his parchment and reclaiming his quill, "_Abnocto Timor_. Say it after me."

"_Abnocto Timor_," she said in a clipped tone, without turning around.

"Again."

"_Abnocto Timor_," she repeated.

"With emphasis on the -or," Snape said, still writing. "_Abnocto tim_**or**. Use it, should you fear the dark. Two swishes and a flick."

"_Abnocto tim__**or**_," she parroted. "Thank you, sir."

"Good evening, Miss Parkinson."

Her third year, Pansy was in Snape's office within three days of the start of term. She stood there unrepentant, munching from a box of sweets left over from the Hogwarts Express trolley.

"I thought perhaps you would have an idea as to who set one-hundred Diricawls loose in the Headmaster's office?" Severus inquired, peering at her. She had a feather stuck in her hair.

Pansy cocked her head. "Diricawls?"

"Diricawls."

"One-hundred of them?"

"Approximately."

"I adore Diricawls!" Pansy giggled, her teeth stained blue.

"How fortunate," Snape said severely, "as you shall be reporting to the Headmaster's office immediately so as to clean their excrement yourself."

"Professor Snape!" she whinged, her blue-tinged lips pouting up. "Why should I have to? How would I know how to get into old Dumblydore's office anyhow?" She held out the tatty box of sweets. "Lemon sherbet?" she asked slyly, her cerulean eyes meeting his. She was walking a dangerous, challenging line.

Snape bore his gaze into hers. "You do yourself a great disservice with your continued cheek, Miss Parkinson." She only gazed back at him balefully and stuffed a handful of sweets into her mouth until her cheeks pouched out like a chipmunk's.

Severus found all his fourth year females absolutely odious, owing to the revolting state of their mass adolescence. He despised the sulky way Pansy and Daphne and Millicent and all their insipid followers posed, their arms crossed almost self-consciously over their budding chests, one hip slung forward with calculated indifference. Their bodies had morphed and curved and changed. He found the way these fourteen-year-old nitwits flouted their impending sexuality to be both off-putting and absurd. Their legs were still too coltish, their hips too narrow, their breasts too new to be truly alluring to any reasonable, mature male. And then there were the hideous cosmetic charms, the furtive attempts to roll their uniform skirts at the waist to shorten the length and the incessant giggling that accompanied them wherever they went. Severus hated fourth years with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, even more than he hated children in general, and it always gave him savage satisfaction to see the tedious, wide-eyed innocence of childhood wiped clean come fourteen, in the unforgiving wake of their blossoming adolescence. He preferred to see it burn out sooner than later.

Pansy shadowed Draco incessantly, adoring him in every way, and the pinnacle of their gawky, puerile attraction was summited upon the commencement of the abhorrent occasion that was the Yule Ball.

"I say, Severus," Filius Flitwick squeaked, noting to him in surprise, "your Slytherins clean up rather nicely!" The staff were forced to chaperone the blasted affair, and both he and Flitwick now found themselves lurking against the far wall of the Great Hall, hidden behind a pile of the Durmstrang boys' smelly Yak cloaks.

"Quite." Unimpressed, Severus sipped from his delicate glass cup of fruit punch, its inexplicably small handle forcing him to crook his small finger. "How unfortunate that your Ravenclaws do not." He gestured openly at Stephen Cornfoot who was waltzing by, clinging desperately to Hannah Abbott of Hufflepuff. He could see the imbecile's lips moving silently as he counted his steps, and even Severus could recognise a father's out-of-fashion dressrobes charmed three times smaller to fit a boy's youthful form.

Draco and Pansy looked only slightly better. Draco was sporting a severely-cut set of robes that screamed of his mother's eye and Pansy looked like a frenetic, ridiculous flamingo in her frilly, pink dressrobes. _It's the set from the cover of Teen Witch Weekly_, Pansy had bragged incessantly, since the ball had been announced. Her friends had been duly impressed. _There's only this one set of them and Daddy bought them for me_. She seemed oblivious to the fact that the fashion was so elaborate, so contrived, that she'd rendered herself a child again, wrapped head-to-toe in a treasured swath of pink-princess-fantasy.

"Come on," Draco finally said, pulling away from her. He wrapped his fingers tightly around her slender wrist. "Let's go."

"What? No!" she protested, squirming. "I'm having a good time!"

"Just for a bit," Draco insisted. "We could come back-"

"But, the Weird Sisters-"

"Pansy, come _on_," Draco said forcefully, and he crooked his arm in a way that forced her to step closer to him, her wrist still caught up in his grasp. Severus observed that young mister Malfoy's face had softened and that he was gazing down at his pink princess with a hungry look of approval and curiosity.

Pansy looked up at Draco, surprised. He tugged her closer, until their bodies bumped together. She blushed, and then stepped away, her hand flying up nervously to the back of her neck.

"Take a walk with me," Draco said to her imperiously, and as they wove through the thronging crowd still occupying the Great Hall, Severus caught a glimpse of their hands where they clung fiercely to one another and noted Draco had managed to intertwine his fingers through hers.

Snape rolled his eyes.

"Severus," Albus said, gesturing at the empty chairs facing his desk. "Please." It was in the days following the battle at the Department of Mysteries, in which, of course, Severus had not participated. The students were packed and ready to leave, and the Hogwarts Express would be at the station come morning. Midnight approached.

Severus sat.

"I am glad to see you." The headmaster did not bother to conjure tea. His face was even more weathered than usual, shadowed by resignation. "It is time, I'm afraid," Albus said, letting his hand rest upon a small stack of thick, sealed envelopes, yellowed and brittle with age, the haunting, silenced scrawl of Sirius Black defacing their fronts.

"Time," Snape said, not knowing how else to respond. He was a man of deeply repressed sentiment.

"You shall teach Defence come the autumn term." The old man looked at him as if genuinely regretful, and Severus had a moment of wonder. "I had hoped to avoid this day, Severus," said Dumbledore. "However, the events of the days past demonstrate Lord Voldemort is stronger and more fortified than I had anticipated. Ah," he said, steepling his fingers, "I find myself constructing reluctant goodbyes in my mind, imagining the final chapters. This is never a good sign."

"Indeed," Severus said again, vaguely acknowledging the headmaster with a slight nod. His pulse quickened unwittingly.

"Do you recall the promise you made to me the day I granted you sanctuary here?"

_And what will you give me in return, Severus? Anything . . ._ "Yes."

"As much I have hoped a different outcome might be forged, it shan't be so. So," said Dumbledore, his eyes ever quick and bright with steely resolve, "both cannot live while the other survives. I have had a most excellent, and what I'd like to believe is a meaningful, life. We both know who must survive."

"Brilliant," Severus said darkly. "Your altruism is, as always, truly inspiring."

"Now, Severus." Dumbledore admonished Snape gently, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "You have been afforded at least seventeen years of life here under my protection that you very well might have missed out on, had Lord Voldemort caught you before you managed to ensconce yourself within the safety of these walls. When this is over, you may find your possibilities extended." Dumbledore shrugged. "We simply cannot know. You gave me your word you were willing to accept this risk. It is upon us at last."

Severus frequently hated Albus's cold pragmaticism. "You unbearable ponce," he snipped. "I had a choice?"

"You did." Dumbledore looked at him sharply. "It's been several years since you've called me a ponce," he noted. "No, it is not a simple thing to acknowledge one's own mortality. It is one thing to know on a peripheral level the constraints of our humanity. I know it is quite another to have one's demise suddenly scheduled." He was silent for several moments. "I find myself at this moment most grateful for my friendship with Nicholas Flamel. I do believe I am prepared for the next step in life's journey."

"How brilliant for you."

Albus ignored the petulance. "Alas," he said finally, with a sigh. "I do so dislike goodbyes."

"Then, refrain from indulging in any."

Dumbledore looked up at him keenly. "Perhaps I shall refrain," he said. "You may be on to something. What good would it do our cause for me to confide such bleak inevitabilities?"

"What shall you do in the meantime?" Severus asked, feeling suprisingly numb.

"Oh, there is much to be done yet. We shall discuss it more in depth at a later time." Albus rose then and Snape followed suit. Apparently their meeting was over. "So, set forth and arrange the Defence classroom to your specifications, and set the curriculum to your liking. As for me-" a hint of the headmaster's usual cheeriness flashed, like the fleeting wink of a firefly "-I have a trunk full of socks I have been saving for a special occasion. What better a day to indulge?" They moved toward the door. "I should like to meet with you again, Severus, come July. Let us say the seventh of July. Please ensure you keep that day free of other committments. We shall need the entirety of the day to finalise our strategies."

Snape nodded. The medeival wrought-iron door handle was cold against his palm.

Dumbledore gazed at him fondly. "You are more than an opportunity to me, Severus," he said. "You always have been. You are more than a mole, more than a spy. My faith in you-"

"I dislike goodbyes as well," Severus said, abruptly interrupting the headmaster. He yanked open the door and stalked through it determinedly. "Seventh July. Until then, I shall undoubtedly be otherwise engaged."

Snape always moved silently, which facilitated his ability to catch unsuspecting students in compromising situations, and as he made his way back through the dungeons following his talk with Dumbledore it was Draco and Pansy he came across, the two of them stuffed tightly into a crevice carved into the ancient stone walls. He stopped.

"C'mon, Pansy!" Draco's hands were all over her, skimming the rise of her slight breasts and creeping underneath her skirt. "I want to pull with you so bad . . . " He rocked against her, grinding and circling, and then kissed her fiercely.

"We are!" Pansy pointed out, her whispers muffled by breathless kisses. "I'm right here!"

"No, I want to be with you." Draco breathed into her ear, his chin digging into her thin shoulder. "C'mon, _please_?"

"No!" Severus discerned from Pansy's tired tone that this was not a new conversation. "I can't."

"Why not?" Draco wheedled. "We're old enough!"

"It's not that," she said irritatedly. "Why can't we just- isn't this good enough?"

"Mm, God, it's _brilliant_,"Draco said. "Too brilliant. I can't help it, Pansy! I want to do everything with you!"

"Shh, shh," she shushed him soothingly. "Here, let me undo your trousers-"

"No," said Draco forcefully. Severus fell further back into the shadows, reluctantly fascinated. "I'll show you! I'll show you how good it'll be . . . " Even in the darkened corridor, the pale contrast of Pansy's knickers against her shadowed thigh was quite obvious to Severus as Draco pulled them down, and the two fell quiet as, Severus assumed, Draco buried his fingers inside her warm depths, busying himself trying to coax Pansy's unexpected resolve from her slick, inviting folds, so he might banish it forever. They kissed wetly, passionately, Pansy's arms wrapped tightly around Draco's neck, flashes of Draco's blond hair catching the occasional glint of light.

"God!" she said, after several minutes of thrashing about, and it was all she said as a strangled gurgle bubbled unconsciously in her throat as she thrust her hips forward against Malfoy's sure hand.

"Yeah," Draco said, his longing plaintive and almost painful. "See, yeah? It was good-"

"I'm not fucking you, Draco," Pansy whispered breathlessly, "so undo your trousers and tell me how else you want it, before I get really hacked off and leave you here to take care of it yourself."

Draco's frustration exploded. "WHY FUCKING NOT?" he raged, biting into her neck, ignorning her squeal of pain. "WHY NOT? WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO?" Severus detected hints of the boy's inevitable breakdown. "WHEN'S IT GOING TO BE ENOUGH FOR YOU?"

Pansy caught his lip and bitback, clamping down until he yelped and released her, and when she spoke it was quite possibly the only time Severus could recall her usually mean, posh little voice waver. "Because your father's been put in Azkaban and you're mother's owls practically guarantee you'll be next, and I love you so much-" her voice broke then "-_too_ much, to do it like this."

Draco's ragged breath cut through the stillness. "I can handle it, Pansy," he said, his ridiculous, false bravado flowing freely.

"Good on you," Pansy snapped, forcing her tears back and falling to her knees before him. Snape could see her fingers trembling at Draco's waist as she fumbled with the zipper. "Maybe I can't."

Severus crept quietly away then, leaving Pansy Parkinson to suck Draco Malfoy's cock within the relative obscurity of a dank niche in the bowels of the Slytherin dungeons, and he didn't even reflect upon the fact that it was the only time during his career as an instructor that he had not relished the opportunity to catch and punish any students he might find _en flagrante_. His thoughts were elsewhere - unwanted goodbyes were everywhere, unbidden and relentless.

The next year was terrible, mostly owing to the fact that Albus was now forced to keep Severus inthe dark about what was obviously a major component in the fight against the Dark Lord, so as to keep Voldemort from engaging in reconnaissance via Legilimency. Severus was reduced to an errand boy of sorts, which annoyed him thoroughly.

There was also the matter of Draco Malfoy to weigh on Severus's mind. He'd made the Unbreakable Vow to Narcissa Malfoy, for he'd felt it would have been dangerous to refuse - despite the fact that to shoulder another's burden was decidedly un-Slytherin and against Severus's own nature. On top of this, the boy was annoyingly independent when it came to whatever mission he had been assigned, although Draco must surely have known the futility of his undertaking. Severus recognised in Draco the desire to please, the need to accomplish, and he attributed this to the boy's inability to fathom he might merely be fodder for an inhuman master's petty evening of the score.

"I can assist you, Draco," Severus had insisted, on more than one occasion.

"I'll do it myself!" As the months passed, Draco's face became increasingly peaked and he wore a constant pinched look. He ignored Pansy's attempts at attention and had become far more introverted and self-focused than Severus would have ever thought possible for such a showy, loud boy.

Pansy herself became unbearably sullen, slacking off on both her prefect duties and her schoolwork after May came, for an owl arrived from her family's solicitor indicating both her parents had disappeared and were completely unaccounted for. This did not surprise Severus, for he'd encountered none of Pansy's family amongst the Death Eater loyalists he'd met over the years.

Crude, shaky lines twitched in the proverbial sand.

It was beginning to become hot, especially in the afternoons, and Snape found himself weary and disinterested in student instruction. It took all the energy he could muster to properly instruct the fifth and seventh years for their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s respectively; for the other classes, he relied heavily on in-class reading and a pre-packaged, Ministry approved curriculum to provide adequate instruction. He knew he would never teach at Hogwarts again and, not being one for goodbyes, did what he could to ensure his last days of sanctuary might simply prove untaxing. There were certain places, certain routines in this place that had become comfortably familiar to him. Severus was unsure if he deserved to mourn any losses.

An especially stiffling, hot day arose in June.

Severus studied his class of sixth years. Granger was taking impeccable notes, as if they might someday matter. Potter stared down at his parchment, his expression unreadable in the dim light, while Weasley took refuge in Granger's pile of parchment, copying busily as fast as he could. Finnegan was snoring, his head on Thomas's shoulder. Draco was absent, the reason why Severus was unaware of. His Slytherins paid careful attention to the pre-formatted lecture which was bleating monotonously from an uncorked purple glass bottle Snape had placed on the lecturn. Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott passed a note between them. The five Ravenclaw girls sat in their usual row, writing diligently. Severus moved his gaze over to Pansy.

She sat dangerously low in her seat, her arms crossed sullenly over her chest, and she paid the lecture no mind and took no notes. She caught Severus's gaze and held it, and it was then that Nott shifted in front of her in order to redeliver his missive to Zabini, and Severus was afforded an unobstructed glance. Pansy's feet were planted wantonly far apart, and Snape caught a glimpse of her pale inner thighs, his eyes running up their length into the shadows of her unnecessarily short skirt. She sat perfectly still, save for one knee, which she bounced up and down compulsively. He glanced upward and her eyes bore into his, and the hollow tapping as she flicked the nib of her quill against the desktop became as pronounced as a metronome to him.

Why it was at this juncture, what with years of his tolerating her ungraceful shows of youthful immodesty, that Snape's loins suddenly exploded with furious, mad desire at the sight of her he would never know.

She held his gaze, ever impertinent, and Severus wondered if he concentrated hard enough if he might feel the frantic vibrations she was tapping out right through the floor of the Defence classroom, and oddly he was reminded of the time just a year ago when she had come bawling to him yet again, sporting a full rack of antlers. To boot, whenever Pansy had taken a step or walked, the corridors had filled with the sound of stampeding hooves.

He lowered his eyes finally, attempting to ignore his raging hard-on; however, he was quite sure he could feel her eyes burning into the top of his skull as he feigned grading essays.

Severus found this rather exhilirating, and so when it continued on for the next week, he sought no reason to complain.

During the second week of June, Pansy dropped a folded square of parchment on Snape's desk as the students filed from the room following the day's lecture. Snape didn't touch it, knowing full well that none of his students would dare to try and take anything from the top of his desk. Once they had gone, he unfolded it.

_I've stopped wearing knickers_.

Severus leaned back in his chair and fixed his fingers together much like Albus might while considering an especially vexing problem; however, he did not feel aggrieved. As end-of-term approached, sleep had become nearly impossible - he often found himself startling awake, his stomach clenched with the anxiety of the unknown. So, it was perhaps in this vein that, instead of excoriating Pansy for her inexcusable behaviour until she cried and begged for his mercy from an eternity of detention, Severus gave into the titillation. He sent the door to his classroom banging shut with a flick of his wand and plunged his hand through the dark folds of his robes, and he wanked himself ferociously until he came right there onto the floor under his desk, the vision of Pansy's skirt hem brushing against the back of her thighs filling his mind.

He didn't know if he was losing his mind, or freeing it.

"Professor Snape?"

Millicent Bulstrode. Still heartbreakingly ungainly.

"What is it, Miss Bulstrode?" Snape barely afforded her a glance. He was authoring the Defence N.E.W.T. exam.

"It's Pansy . . . "

"What about her," he prompted, when Millicent failed to elaborate.

"I think something's wrong with her."

"Indeed."

"She cries in her sleep," Millicent said, tentatively taking a step forward. She rested her fingertips on the top of Snape's desk. "And she won't turn the light out! None of us can get any sleep anymore, 'cos of it - if we try and put the light out, she hexes us. She gave Tracey her prefect badge tonight. Said she was done."

Severus cocked an eyebrow. "Done?"

"With being a prefect."

Snape considered this silently.

"She says she won't be taking her exams, and what with her parents being gone . . . " Millicent's rough voice trailed off.

"Where is Miss Parkinson now?" Severus asked wearily, rubbing at his eyes. Blast it, he would never finish preparing the N.E.W.T.

"Back in the dormitory," Millicent said, thumbing over her shoulder. "Also?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "She's refusing to wear knickers!"

"I've heard," Snape said dryly.

Millicent's small eyes widened. "You have?"

"Your concern is noted," he said, ignoring the girl's questioning look. "Instruct Miss Parkinson she is to report to me immediately."

"Thank you, sir," Millicent said, obviously relieved. It seemed clear to Severus from the girl's demeanor that Pansy's antics were annoying her roommates.

"Go," Snape said, nodding toward the door.

She lounged sulkily in the doorway. "What?" she asked, obviously put out.

Severus didn't look up. "Have a seat."

"Why?"

"Because I am your Head of House and I've instructed you to do so," he said sharply. He gestured toward a threadbare armchair opposite his desk. "Sit down. Now."

She huffed into the chair. Snape registered the cold anger pouring from her pouty gaze.

He resisted giving into his urge to glance up her skirt. Refocusing on his N.E.W.T. exam, Severus carefully outlined a series of questions regarding the Patronus charm, including requirements for his students to address both practical demonstrations and theory. All the while Pansy sat across from him, sullen and hawk-eyed.

"What do you want?" she asked abruptly.

Severus ignored her, dipping his quill. He continued writing.

"Fecking hell, Snape," she growled. "What do you _want_?" She began swaying her knee to-and-fro, lazily. "Millicent told me I was to come here, that you wanted to speak with me. So, what gives?"

"What would be your guess, Miss Parkinson?" Snape asked after several moments. He still refused to look up. "Why should I call you here tonight?"

"I dunno," she said, her tone exquisitely bored. "Maybe you thought I'd fuck you."

This time he looked up - sharply. "Fifty points from Slytherin," Snape hissed. He put down his quill and rose, hands on desk. "You dare to disrespect me so?"

She stared at him, vaguely amused. "Honestly, Professor! How would shagging you be disrespecting you?" she asked sweetly. A cunning, viperous undertone belied her innocent nonchalance.

"Shut up, girl!" Severus practically spat at her. "You embarass yourself." He was finding the entire exchange unnerving, yes, but also . . . something else. His senses felt alert, almost as if he were suddenly in reach of a particular want, a craving. The cold, strange darkness that filled Snape's mind came creeping, keeping his prurient intentions in check. Snape was nothing if not a man aware of his own desires, and he was not particularly known for controlling certain impulses, especially when hefelt strongly about something. Or someone.

"You don't know what embarrasses me."

"I know what should embarrass you, and propositioning your professor certainly tops the list," Snape said, pulling himself up to his full height. He stared down at her beadily, his own arms crossed. "Perhaps you ought seek the company of Mr. Malfoy-"

"I don't want to talk about Draco," she snapped, her eyes glittering angrily. "Who said I propositioned you anyway? Why would I shag _you_?"

For a moment a hot wave of humiliation hovered over Severus, threatening to crash down over him. It wouldn't be the first time he had misread a girl's intentions. What Snape did have now, however, was the benefit of time and experience, and as he stared at his charge he knew instantly, keenly, her crude attempt to rebuff his interpretation was merely a bluff.

"The absurd updates on your nether-wear shall cease, then?"

"Oh, that?" She touched her tongue slyly to the back of her teeth. "No." She held his gaze and slid low in the chair. Crooking her finger under the hem of her skirt she lifted it and exposed herself to Severus, and for a breathtakingly vivid moment the shadowy image of her dark golden curls hung between them, seductive and promising. She spread her knees apart, giving him a teasing glimpse of pink, before dropping her skirt. If she hadn't been so obviously angry the gesture might have been alluring. Might have been. Maybe. But, possibly not. "See?"

Severus didn't react outwardly. "Miss Parkinson," he asked, "what has happened to you? What is wrong?" As the words left his mouth, he attempted to recall the last time he had even asked after a student's troubles - it was moments such as these that he most hated his Head of House duties. He disdained and was ill-versed at both mentoring and comfort. More often than not he couldn't even pretend to care about the adolescent trials and tribulations of his students. After all, his own adolescence had been beyond horrific, and if he could survive those wretched years, then, by God, anyone else could certainly bear a normal childhood. He wasn't one to coddle.

"What's happened to _you_?" she retorted, a devious, knowing gleam in her eyes.

Snape drew up. "I am not the one in question here. You are the student."

"Maybe I'm not!"

"You're not a student?" Snape said sarcastically. "Yet, here you are, attending Hogwarts, going to all your classes, poring over your studies-"

"I'm only here," Pansy interrupted snidely, "because home is too quiet!" Her chest rose and fell rapidly, as if she were struggling to contain control. "Who gives a shit about- about- about _any_ of this?" She looked up at him, oozing bleakness. "None of this matters!" She stretched her arms out, gesturing grandly. "What's this going to get me, Professor? I can't get on anywhere, not after what's happened to my family - everyone whispers that they're Death Eaters! Or that they're too Pureblooded! There's no place in this world for people like us, don't you see? So, I could give a fuck about your bloody schoolwork!" She glowered, hot, angry tears welling against her lower lashes.

"Your parents may be alive," Severus pointed out. "You don't know."

"They're not alive."

"How can you say?"

"Because," she said, fully bawling now, "they would never leave me like they did!" She lifted her chin, defiant through her tears. "Maybe no one else thinks I'd be anyone never to leave, but to my parents I _am_ that someone!" Snape could barely understand her through her blubbering. "Don't you understand? _Everyone_ is that precious to somebody . . . " She wept, consumed by self-pity.

Rage exploded within him; it was all Snape could to not backhand the ever-loving shit out of her. Instantly, he was in her face, grasping the arms of the ancient wingback and jamming his knee into the folds of her skirt - but it wasn't about _that_. "You are a selfish, _stupid_, petulant girl," he hissed, not caring that flecks of his saliva flew liberally as he spoke, causing her to recoil. "How predictable that you should value yourself so highly." His nails dug into the weathered velvet fabric. "Until you understand, Miss _Parkinson_, that the exact opposite is true, you shall suffer the consequences of your self-centered ennui, and rightly so." Snape pressed in, so close that his chin brushed the soft skin of her throat as he hissed, "No-one is irreplaceable. Learn that. Learn to live in your echoing, miserable, empty manor." He snapped upright and stepped backward. "You shall sit right there," he commanded, gathering his quill, ink and the almost-finished N.E.W.T. exam. He stalked toward the private room located at the back of his office. "I've work to finish and I shan't tolerate your revolting displays any further. Do. Not. _Move_."

He shut himself away with nary a glance.

She dropped a note on his desk the next day, on the way out from class.

_I'm wearing knickers_.

Severus crumpled the scrap ofparchment in his hand, but his show of indifference couldn't quell his wonder at what it might be like to rip them off her. He glared after her, his cock twitching, awakening. _The little bitch_.

She may have re-donned her knickers, but her behaviour was as awful as ever. The first week of June passed - N.E.W.T.s were but a week away - and Pansy's deplorable, needy antics escalated. Every night one of her friends marched into Snape's office, complaining and expressing concern. _She screams at us when we try and turn out the lights_! _We're having to sleep in the common room_ . . . _She punched Draco and told him never to speak to her again_. . . _Draco was_ crying! . . . _She was flirting with Blaise Zabini - right in front of Draco_ . . . _Draco and Blaise fought and gave each other facial tentacles, and Pansy only laughed_ . . .

"Enough!" Severus barked, slamming his hand down on his desk before Tracey Davis could even open her mouth. "Enough! Miss Parkinson has chosen her course of behaviour. Now, leave me be from your incessant complaints." He turned away from Tracey, dismissing her with a short wave of the hand.

"But, Profess-"

"I don't want to hear it."

"Pansy's-"

"I am not interested."

"But-"

"Miss Davis, should you continue to aggravate me with-"

"Professor Snape!" Tracey interrupted boldly, "Pansy's _pissed_!"

_Fucking hell_. "Pissed?" He turned, so ominously that Tracey shrunk back.

"Sir, I'm sorry to bother you, but-" she pointed to the shiny silver badge pinned crookedly to her robes "-I'm prefect now, and Pansy's pissed and she's taking off her clothes in the common room, and I'm afraid she'll end up-"

"You may go, Miss Davis," Snape said shortly. "I shall attend to Miss Parkinson." He looked at the young girl grudgingly. She had been correct in pressing the matter. "Good evening."

There was something about flickering shadows that led Snape to feel morose - winding through the cobbled passages of the Slytherin dungeons under the dull glow of the omnipresent torches, long burned into the sconces lining the walls, did nothing to ease his sour thoughts. Nor did collecting a drunken, sobbing mess of a girl from the Slytherin common room. Once again he had tossed her into the tatty wingback opposite his desk, and what irritated him most was that he genuinely had no practical matters to attend to this night, that might divert his attention from his forsaken charge.

"-so, bloody well right I pulled with Blaise, 'cos Draco -" Pansy was slurring, incredibly intoxicated "-is a git! A horrible, self-centered, selfish git . . . Daphne told me that she heard him talking to another girl down in the second-floor loo . . . why wouldn't he just talk to _me_?"

"Perchance because you're insufferable?" Severus posited, the corner of his lip curling reflexively.

"Draco's insufferable, too!" she blubbered defensively. "And with all in-inshuff- sufferability being the same, what's he doing going to some other girl to pour his heart out? _I'M RIGHT HERE_!" She sobbed and wiped at her nose with the sleeve of her jumper, which Severus had managed to order her back into. "She's probably shagging him, that's what!" she said contemptuously, crossing her arms tightly. "Because I won't shag him. He went off with someone who would!"

Snape actually found that didn't care why a girl, who so readily showed her bits to her Head of House, was unwilling to shag a boy her own age who clearly fancied her. He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, watching her silently.

"You probably want to know why I won't shag him," she said, teetering drunkenly in her chair. A strand of hair was caught in the corner of her mouth. She blew it away.

"No," Snape said.

"No?"

"No." He raised an eyebrow for emphasis.

"We had a brilliant thing, you know?" She pouted then, her mean little mouth twisting up. "But then all he wanted to do was-" Pansy looked at Snape drunkenly. "It was all or nothing, he said." She tottered to her feet unsteadily, putting out one hand for balance. "What's this?" she asked, after draping herself across Severus's desk. She had picked up a journal, which was thoroughly hexed up with binding and privacy charms. She tried to open the leather cover, but the book leapt from her hands, snarling, and bit the ball of her thumb. "Bugger!" Pansy slammed the book down onto Snape's desk, quieting it. She held the journal out to him.

"Is this where you keep your master plan?" she slurred coyingly, giving him a half-smile. "All your deep, dark secrets - are they in here, Snape?" She came closer.

"Professor Snape," Severus said, peering up at her darkly. He could smell the drink on her, could smell-

"Why are there so many secrets?" she asked slowly, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Why does everyone have to have so many bloody secrets?" She moved in on him, moved in far too close.

Severus didn't answer, but rocked slowly in his chair as he considered her. She shifted again, and then his knee was bumping between her own. She straddled his leg, looking down at him queerly. A thousand warning bells sounded off in his mind and time seemed to slow until Severus believed he could hear his own breath echoing as if he were suddenly immersed in the bath, hollow and rushing. Repercussions rose in his mind like gargoyles, grotesque moral hellions that they were, yet the only definite suretySeverus discerned was the unlikely prospect of infinite tomorrows.

So, he decided. "Are you not a clever girl, Pansy?" he asked finally, amiably enough.

She took great pause, her fingers tightening against the leather cover of his notebook. "You think I'm clever?" Her eyes brightened with a flicker of modest wonder.

"I do not doubt," he said, selfishly squelching his duty to her, "that you shall someday guess my secret." He reached up and grasped his journal, trying to reclaim it. She wasn't having any of it. "Give it back now."

She maintained her deathgrip. Their gazes met. "I," she said finally, leaning in until she was so close that the heat from her mouth warmed his jaw, "am not wearing any-"

"Hush . . . " The firelight flickered then, sending the dreaded shadows dancing, and Severus thought he felt a chill. _Stop. Don't-_ The warmth of her skin drew him in, and then Snape was touching her and there was no turning back. He circled his fingers up her thigh, burrowing under her skirt, his cock so hard he was certain his trousers were already damp. "Shh . . . "

She made a small noise as he worked his fingers inside her. She was warm and soft, but certainly not slick or ready. She opened her eyes then and looked at him, her expression unreadable. She crooked an arm around Severus's neck and eased down onto his knee, keeping her legs spread and trapping his hand between them. She cocked her head questioningly. His journal fell to the floor.

"Closer," Severus commanded, patting her on the arse until she squirmed and tilted her hips forward. "Yes." She slowly rested her forehead against his temple, but he did not turn his face into her.

His breath drew more ragged as he touched her; he was gaining confidence. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore - he had his fingers wedged up tightly inside her, and she was moaning lightly, her breath shuddering against his ear. He frantically pawed at his billowing robes with one hand, moving them aside. "Touch me," he ordered, dragging her hand to his crotch. "_Ahh_."

She was awkward, though, and soon Snape's irritation rose. Perfunctorily, she kneaded the length of his erection through his trousers.

He dug his fingers into her hair, scraping the nape of her neck. "I am no schoolboy," he hissed angrily, tugging. "Don't be useless!"

She burst into tears.

He could have come right then.

"No," he said, pushing at her arse one more time before pulling free from her. "None of that. Just a moment." She clung to his neck as Severus undid his trousers, pushing them down below his cock. "There," he said, easing her back down as an ember popped in the fireplace. He dragged her hand downward, squeezing her wrist until her fist was tight around his cock. The friction was exquisite! He clutched at her thighs. "Move," he commanded.

"I don't want to!" she protested, sniveling.

"It's fine," he hissed. Severus thrust against her and she stifled a sob. He grunted and dug his fingers into her thigh, squeezing her hand tighter and tighter until his cock was gliding with smooth, shallow thrusts, back and forth against her hot skin, enveloped in the warm, slick sheath of his foreskin. He smelt sex and whiskey; Albus's voice and the plaguing thoughts of his task at hand fell away momentarily as he allowed his student to touch him, as he allowed his _student_ to bring him off. It was so execrable, he knew, that Snape half expected the castle itself to eat him alive.

She finally found a workable rhythm and he let his hand drop away. "_Yes_," he moaned after a long moment. He came with a ragged final thrust. Spent, he collapsed backward, his heart hammering away in his chest. It had been a long time. Pansy sniffled. "Why are you crying?" he asked witheringly.

"I didn't do it right! "

"It was fine," he said, pushing her off.

"I DIDN'T-" Pansy had stumbled back across his office and was now burrowing into the squashy wingback like an animal. "YOU DIDN'T-" She was crying uncontrollably.

But Snape was already distracted, having done up his trousers. His task was back with a vengeance, settling in his mind like black blanket of dread. "Lodge a complaint if you're so inclined."

He knew better, though. Now she had a secret of her own.

The next night she was drunker than ever.

She tried to kiss him, but he wouldn't let her. Instead, he had her kneel on the floor and look up at him as he wanked himself. After he came, she wiped herself clean on the hem of his robes, and then stood and perched casually on the side of his desk. "Haven't you got any sweets?" she asked, glancing about at the sparse desktop.

"You take me for the headmaster, and a Gryffindor at that?" Snape sneered. "I just gave you a treat."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "You're vile," she said. Her hands roved incessantly, picking up this and that from Severus's desk, inspecting his possessions with a keen eye. "Your master plan!" she said suddenly, having located his journal again. He hadn't bothered to hide it away. "I've been thinking about this."

"Why?"

"I don't know," she said, almost coquettishly. She glanced at him. "My father always wrote in a journal - every night! He always had great thoughts. I imagine it's the same for you, that you have all these-" she gestured animatedly "_thoughts_! I'll bet you're the type who has so many great thoughts that you have to write them down just to keep track of them all. Right?"

Snape peered at her, saying nothing.

Pansy leaned in, running her finger up his forearm. "Professor, you're so . . . _mysterious_!" she said dreamily. "That's why I want to be with you!"

"You don't want to be with me," Severus snapped, recoiling at the ridiculousness of it all.

"Don't you like me?"

"No."

"Liar!" she protested gamely.

"You may go," he said, giving his zipper one final tug.

"The Gobi fire-leech," Snape drawled _sotto voce_ the next day. The two back rows of students leaned forward, trying to catch his words. "Anyone but Miss Granger." The class stared at him blankly. "How fortunate," he continued, after several long moments had passed, "that you are not seventh years. Should you attempt to take a N.E.W.T. in Defence without knowing the properties of the Gobi fire-leech, you would undoubtedly expose yourselves as the unlearned, amateur dunderheads that you are." He shook out his robes for emphasis, folding himself within the billowing cloud of black as it settled. "Mr. Nott, tell us of the Gobi fire-leech." Snape settled behind his desk and steepled two fingers under his nose, piercing a gaze at Theodore Nott.

"The Gobi fire-leech is a quintuple-X creature," Theodore said.

"And?" Snape prompted darkly, after a full minute passed. The ancient clock on the wall tocked loudly.

"It's very small?"

"As any half-witted first year would know. Mr. Boot?"

"Um-" Terry Boot looked worried. "Was this in the book?"

"If it was in the book, your lack of knowledge regarding the Gobi fire-leech indicates you have not read your assignments as required," Snape said. "Conversely, had you actually read the book, you would know that the Gobi fire-leech is indeed _not_ mentioned in the current text. Ten points from Ravenclaw for your unpreparedness." He shifted his gaze, daring a look. "Miss Parkinson?"

"I don't really care."

"The question is do you _know_?"

"I do know." She sneered.

"And?"

"I don't care to say."

Snape saw Granger's hand waving in his periphery. "Then I shall conclude you don't know," he said icily. She was challenging him openly.

"Whatever," she retorted, holding his gaze boldly.

The clock tocked again and Snape took great pause. To take points from a Slytherin for being exceptionally rude would undoubtedly be more out of character to any onlooker than choosing to ignore Pansy's challenge. "Then you shall prepare an essay on the Gobi fire-leech to present to the class tomorrow." He turned slowly to his left. "Miss Granger," he said witheringly, giving in. "If you must."

"The Gobi fire-leech is a quintuple-X restricted creature, and for good reason," Hermione said, folding her hands on her desk primly. "The Gobi fire-leech is extremely small - microscopic even-"

"You shall refrain from defaulting to Muggle descriptors in my class, Miss Granger," Snape interrupted loudly. "Five points from Gryffindor. As you should know, most in here would not be familiar with a object so mundane as a Muggle microscope." His Slytherins tittered at this and began whispering amongst themselves.

Granger stared at him darkly, her cheeks reddening slightly as Weasley's face twisted into a scowl. "Yes, professor," she said finally, in a clipped tone. "The- the Gobi fire-leech is extremely small, so small that a person cannot see it with the naked eye." She straightened in her chair, squaring her shoulders. "At the size of a grain of sand and at millions of leeches per number seven dragon's claw, the Gobi fire-leech is considered a parasitic creature."

"Tell us why."

"Well, the fire-leech can be introduced into the bloodstream," Granger said.

Blaise Zabini snorted. "Bullshit!"

"It's true!" She glowered at Zabini swottily. "The Gobi fire-leech is one of the most restricted magical creatures because of it! Why, just one small phial is enough to kill a person."

"My dad's told me about those!" Megan Jones piped up from the Hufflepuffs' row. "My uncle died from the Gobi fire-leech. It was You-Know-Who that did it to him!"

Snape didn't react to this mention outwardly. The girl was correct - he remembered well the incident involving Octavius Jones. "And how were the creatures introduced into your uncle's bloodstream?" he enquired. Megan Jones did not respond, but stared at him fearfully. "What of it, girl? Do you not know your own family's history?" Snape snapped, goading her.

She shook her head. "I can't-"

"That's right," Snape said, nonplussed. "You cannot. You do not wish to speak of it, for the introduction of the Gobi fire-leech into a person's bloodstream is not only Dark Magic, but is also Blood Magic." He paused, allowing it to sink in. "You shall continue, Miss Granger, as you persist in favouring the ever enlightening course of too much information." He flicked his wand imperceptibly toward the clock on the wall. The volume of its tick-tocking increased exponentially. "You've five minutes."

"Um, well-"

"Five. Minutes." Severus settled back smugly, wand in hand.

Granger cleared her throat delicately. "Yes, well, as stated, the Gobi fire-leech is considered a parasitic magical creature and is extremely small in size. While no bigger than a grain of sand, the fire-leech is actually elongated and resembles any other kind of leech in structure. It is native to the Gobi desert in Africa and was thought to first be imported to Europe accidentally by magic carpet traders originally from Algeria-" The sound of quill on parchment slowly began to underscore the sound of the clock.

Severus waited until the heads of his charges were bowed keenly over their scrolls before again considering Pansy. She was, of course, taking no notes, and Snape felt himself irritated by the knowledge that Granger's usual practise was to keep a reproving eye on whatever professor she might be addressing, to assure herself that her instructor was properly mesmerised by her insufferable, endless knowledge. "You shall address the class," Severus barked gruffly. "It is not I who is unlearned of the Gobi fire-leech."

"Right," she said, flushing again and turning back toward her classmates. Snape stared at Weasley until the ugly, freckled sod looked down at his ginormous feet, his angry scowl still in place. "Right, then. Anyhow, the leeches were imported by Algerian magic carpet dealers in the mid-sixteenth century. When the Gobi fire-leech is introduced to a person's bloodstream, the pain is said to exceed that of the Cruciatus curse. A victim feels as if they are burning alive, from the inside out-"

"Maybe Potty or the Weasel will add some to your cuppa, eh Granger?" Goyle interjected, peering meanly down across the rows.

"Silence," Snape warned, but not threateningly, and as Gregory Goyle snerked and went back to his sloppy notes, and as Hermione Granger opened her fat, Muggle-born mouth once again, Snape shifted in a way that hid the flick of his wand and locked eyes with his treacherous mess of a student, Pansy, who was sulking silently halfway up the rows of desks. _Legilimens_ . . . it wasn't even a whisper. Pansy made a small noise in her throat - Snape could _see_ it, rather than hear - and her mouth fell open slightly as if she had been suddenly stricken an idiot.

_-I'm seven! I'm seven today! Mummy's brought me a lovely fur cape - it's ermine from Paris, and it will look grand hanging in my closet, for I mustn't ever wear it or it will get dirty -_ A flash of black shoes - patent leather with straps. Lupin's Boggart wardrobe's door flying open and a flood tide of shiny, black, enormous cockroaches spilling forth, and she's so scared she's speechless as they flow over her shoes, and she can't even manage _Riddikulus_! Images of the Hogwarts Express, scarlet and golden and lost in plumes of steam. A room that once had been well kept and beautiful, now dusty and dark, its floors stained with brick-coloured pools of dried blood . . . _Mum? Daddy? Are you here?_ . . . empty corridors and no house elves -

"-leeches were originally thought to have evolved in the humps of the common dromedary-"

"What's a dromedary?" Crabbe asked.

"A camel," Granger clarified. "As I was saying-"

"A one-humped camel, or a two-humped?"

Granger rolled her eyes. "It doesn't matter," she said irritatedly. "The camel, as most know, stores fat in its hump or humps for long periods of time which, when metabolised, provides energy and also yields one-thousand, one-hundred and eleven grams of water for every one-thousand grams of fat converted-"

"Taking this down, Bulstrode?" Weasley snarked over his shoulder.

"_Ron_!" Granger swatted at his arm. "Stop it! It's not even worth it-"

Rage swelled in Severus's gut. He broke away from Pansy's gaze, feeling the spell dissipate immediately. All he wanted was a mental reprieve, a few moments with someone else's thoughts. Pounding the table, he stood. "The next person who disrupts this lesson shall find themself demonstrator of the extremely painful and potentially lethal effects of the Gobi fire-leech," he hissed, his beetle-black eyes snapping dangerously. He flourished his wand. "Perhaps a reminder to your attention is necessary. _Percutio_!" A tremendous crash of thunder sounded then, and a shimmering, cold steel rain of razor-sharp hat pins rained down from the ceiling and spread ominously over his students, blanketing them. The pins came to a precarious halt only centimetres from their skin, their hands, their scalps, their hair. There, the rain of pins froze and hung mid-air, weaving and dipping as the students reflexively shrunk back. The clock tocked away and Snape stood perfectly still until the silence was palpable. "That's right," he said after a moment. "So quiet, I might hear a pin drop. Now," he said silkily, lifting his wand as a conductor might, "seems like a fine time to practise your _Immobilus_ skills." When nobody moved and they all stared at him dumbly, he sneered and flicked his wand. A small cluster of the pins suddenly fell and impaled themselves in Ron Weasley's hand.

"Blimey!" Weasley yelped, giving his hand a shake. The pins were stuck in deep. "Crap!"

Snape banished them. Blood welled from the punctures in Weasley's hand just the same. "Mr. Weasley? _Immobilus_, starting now." He was savagely pleased when Weasley waved his wand ridiculously then, stammering the spell. Severus considered the rest of the class. "Well?" He motioned with his wand again, threatening to send the pins down, and he was satisfied with the murmured incantations that followed. "Continue," he said curtly, to Granger. "I believe you still have four-and-a-half minutes."

"It doesn't matter how many humps the camel has," Granger said, keeping her wand trained on the monsoon of hat pins aimed straight at her. "In regard to the fire-leech, it's believed the creatures evolved in the humps of camels, where they were subjected to long periods of time without water. Most leeches live in swamps or somesuch, which makes the fire-leech quite contradictory indeed. The fire-leech absorbs-"

Snape looked at Pansy. She was staring straight at him, her wand held lazily aloft, her cloud of pins swirling above her head. She leaned forward and rested her elbow on the desktop, cupping her chin in her hand, and regarded him silently. Then, she mouthed something at him: _Do it again . . ._

His pulse quickened and Granger's voice droned and he let his wand twitch again. _Legilimens_.

Pansy jolted slightly, and then leaned forward and clutched at the lip of her desk with both hands. Her wand slipped from her grasp and clattered to the floor, letting her pins fall. She gasped, tightening her grip, and shut her eyes.

The girl's mind leaked like a seive, like the mess that she was. More images flashed. _Holiday. A beautiful tree, its skirt so ladden with presents it seemed as if the giant spruce were floating on a sea of ribbon and foiled Christmas paper. She sat amongst the wrappings clutching a quilted silk Chimera decorated with real gold and flat, rounded beads carved from the shells of abalone - the creature tilts its head and looks up at her, its tiny bells tinkling softly . . . the glow of a jeweled Firecrab reflects in her eyes. Now there's something else shiny catching her attention - it's a silver Prefect badge sliding from the thick parchment envelope into her eager palm . . ._

A thin line of blood drew down from her hand and pooled on the desktop.

And Snape saw something else.

He saw the girl lifting her skirt for him, saw glimpses of forbidden shadows. He saw his own face from below - from her perspective - as he came. He saw her writhing on her bed, her hand jammed down the front of her knickers, and he saw his name form silently on her lips. _Professor_ . . . she arched, biting down on her lip. He saw Malfoy's fists in her hair, heard Malfoy cry out. He saw her alone, gazing across the endless inky shadow of the lake at twilight from some remote, high place in the castle. _Professor_ . . . He saw her standing before a mirror, admiring her backside as she peeked over her shoulder at her reflection, and he could sense the wonder there on her part, her wonder at the lush creature she'd grown into. He watched her hands travel. _Professor Snape . . . Professor Snape . . . Professor . . . _

"Professor Snape?" Granger cleared her throat and gave a delicate cough. "Sir?"

Severus was jarred back to attention. The portal closed; the clock tocked loudly; twenty sets of eyes regarded him questioningly, and it was with this that he realised Granger had likely called his name several times, having finished her recitation. Worse yet, he was slightly breathless, hot even, from the exertion of it all. He looked at Pansy, who was staring right at him - the corner of her mouth twitched, and then lifted.

"_Finite_," he incanted. His voice rasped. The rain of pins swirled upward and dissipated with a faint _*pop*_. He trained his black gaze on Granger, hating her for not being stupid, so as to have actually needed a full five minutes to bumble and bullshit through an explanation of the Gobi Fire-Leech. "Ten points from Gryffindor, Miss Granger. Class is dismissed."

"What?" Weasley objected, as Granger's mouth fell open in disbelief. "What for?"

Snape was silent for a long moment. Finally he let his lip twitch. "Because I can."

"That's a crock of-"

"Come on, Ron." Granger furiously stuffed her rucksack. "Forget it. Let's just go."

"But-"

"Let's _go_!"

She flounced from the classroom. Weasley threw a last death stare at Snape and skulked out the door after Granger.

Snape was already unaware of any swotty Gryffindors, however; instead he was contemplating fucking Pansy Parkinson. _Yes_, he concluded. _Yes_.

Except that he could not. Fuck her, that is. Snape plied Pansy with Firewhiskey until she was practically falling over. He let her unbutton his severe black robes, let her push them open, let her hands rove wildly. He let her undo his black trousers and rub his cock in between her palms until he was hard and his breath was catching in his throat. He let her suck his cock into her hot, drunken mouth, even though she had no idea as to what she was doing. Her tongue was clumsy, her suction uneven; once again, Snape found himself becoming irritated with her.

"Let us try something new," Snape said, pushing Pansy up. There was a little *pop* as he slid his cock from her lips.

Pansy swayed, grabbing at his knee for balance. "What?" she slurred, looking up at him. Her was face ashen. Tiny beads of perspiration dotted her forehead. "Wha'd'ya want to do?"

"Get up." Severus stood, dragging her up by her uniform tie. "No more firewhiskey," he commanded as she reached for the bottle. She stumbled sideways and crashed into a heavy oak bookcase. It wobbled ominously.

"Ha!" She tittered. "I dropped your- I mean I spilt your buksh- books! Oh, my arm-" Pansy was giggling incessantly; at that moment Snape could not imagine anything more revolting.

"Get up!" he hissed, ordering her again.

"Hee! The room's all swirly!" She managed to make it across the room to where Severus now stood. She encircled his waist with her slender, young arms, and rested her chin on his chest. "Now," she said, looking up at him, and not slurring at all for five seconds, "what is it that you want?"

"What is it that we have not done?"

A sly look passed over her face. "Ah. That."

"That." Snape was thoroughly hacked off, having to have a veiled sexual conversation with an infantile seventeen-year-old girl. At least with the prostitutes in Knockturn Alley, one might throw a written list of services down and never have to exchange a single word. Efficiency - that's what it was. His anger rose further and Severus grabbed Pansy's hair and yanked her head backward. "This," he said, his voice creeping to a whisper. "Have you ever been with a man" he asked, barely audibly, "with whom you are not related?"

Pansy's eyes flashed angrily, but Snape's grip only tightened. "You're a sick sod," she said, stumbling over the words. "'Spect all Purebloods are related at some point." She sneered contemptuously. "Not that you'd know! You're half mudblo-"

If Severus could have gotten away with it he would have thrown her across the room, with the fact that he had directly provoked her never crossing his conscious mind. He half-dragged, half-walked her over to his desk and with a shove to her back sent her sprawling across its top. Furiously, he worked at the zipper on her skirt until it opened and the skirt crumpled to the ground and pooled around her feet. He tugged her knickers down and leaned over her and pressed his cock up against her arse. He encircled her arms with a vice-like grip and pressed her into the desktop with the weight of his upper body. "Do you want this?" he asked, his breath hot against her ear.

"I don' care . . . "

"Do you want this or not?"

"Whatever . . . "

Severus's hand had not left the nape of her neck, where his fingers were entwined through the tangle of hair there. "I shall take what I want, then." He slid his hand between her legs.

"Professor, I-"

"Shut up." He was having a very hard time sliding his cock inside her. She wasn't ready at all. Severus widened his stance, probing at her from behind.

"Please stop, I-"  
>"<em>Hush<em>," he said, as kindly as possible, which was to say not very kindly at all. He was so close to coming that he had to take care not to touch his cock to the back of her thighs lest he climax onto the floor like a bumbling schoolboy. There! His cock eased into her just slightly. He grabbed Pansy's shoulder and strained mightily.

Nothing.

Regardless of his efforts, he could not fuck Pansy Parkinson, and now his balls were tightening and drawing up and he could feel himself coming even though he didn't want to, and he spewed a weak and unsatisfying orgasm against Pansy's arse, and Pansy gave a lurch and vomited profusely across the top of Severus's desk.

That firewhiskey had been from a good year, too.

In the end it had been a waste.

She was just a waste.

Severus stood there, frozen. He made no move to draw up his trousers or to see if Pansy was all right or to stop her vile pool of sick from dripping down onto his boot.

How he hated - viscerally - the girls with the flower names who, no matter what he did, would never let him in.

-

Two days later came a chink in the armour, the secret, steely, protective armour that hid his dalliances with Pansy Parkinson. Malfoy, that little prick, plopped his pretentious arse down next to her at dinner, cheerful as ducks, a lopsided grin crossing his face as he leaned into Pansy and began whispering into her ear.

"'Ave yeh the butter?"

Severus was watching his Slytherin table like a hawk. He ignored Hagrid. The great weepy oaf could do with a little less butter as it were.

"Look here, Snape," Hagrid grumbled, making to reach for the butter while Professor Flitwick became buried in Hagrid's enormous armpit. "No need teh keep the goods all fer yerself-"

"Enough, half-breed." Severus languidly tossed the butter like a discus; twenty pats of butter came to rest in Hagrid's copious beard.

"Now see 'ere, Snape-"

"_Professor_ Snape."

"Dunnah care if you're Dumbledore 'isself! No reason teh throw the bloody butter dish-"

Snape was watching Pansy carefully. At present she was leaning across the table and talking animatedly to Tracey Davis and although Miss Davis shook her head time and again, when Pansy gestured, the other girl reluctantly unpinned the prefect badge from her robes and slapped it facedown into Pansy's outstretched hand. Pansy pocketed her badge with a cheshire grin and Malfoy looked on triumphantly.

What the _hell_ was going on?

"-got a whole cow's worth of butter in meh-"

Severus pushed himself away from the high table. "A man cannot enjoy a meal in peace," he said, looking down his nose at Hagrid. Or more looked down at the giant's round gut, truth be told. Hagrid was just that tall. "There. You have all the butter you need. As for me, I shall take my dinner in my quarters." He turned, his black robes billowing behind him.

"Severus." It was a command.

He stopped. "Headmaster," he said tightly, inclining his head.

"A word in my office after dinner," Dumbledore said quietly. He held up an origami baklava and tweaked its tail. The baklava swan flapped its wings and trumpeted again and again. "Cunning dessert, don't you agree?"

"No."

Dumbledore chuckled. "Perhaps if it vomited on your desk?" There was no smile in the Headmaster's eyes. "Ten o'clock."

Once again Severus inclined his head, all the while a cold dread snaking through his gut. "Regarding?" It was a bold question, considering the headmaster's not-so-segue reference to Snape's episode with Pansy.

"Isn't it obvious?" Dumbledore asked. "Young Mr. Malfoy." He paused. "Amongst other things."

"Noted."

"Ten o'clock."

"Ten o'clock."

"I wish to ask you, Severus, do you know why Mr. Malfoy appears to be so happy?"

Severus was completely unversed in the matter of others' emotions. "I do not," he said without elaborating.

"Why might a boy who's been sent on a certain death mission find himself to be so upbeat, so chipper?"

"As I've said," Snape said tightly, "I wouldn't know."

"Allow me to enlighten you, Severus," Dumbledore said, rising from his chair. He rounded his desk and stood next to Snape, forcing Severus to look up at the headmaster. "He has accepted his death."  
>"What?"<p>

"He's made peace with it. He's accepted that there's no way out for him. He understands that should he not succeed at killing me - which, of course, he will not - his family will be shamed, maybe even killed themselves."

Snape snorted derisively. "How could you know-" He stopped.

"That's right, Severus. No one should know of acceptance better than I." Dumbledore looked at the intricate calendar made from hourglasses and other whirring gadgets, that was built into the wall of the headmaster's office. "How many days have we left? What, eight?"

"You can't possibly know when-"

"I know it will be within the next eight days," Dumbledore said. "Now, about Draco - as I was saying, the boy's shame cuts a deep gorge indeed." Dumbledore continued on as if nothing else had been said. "To have accepted his death means he has decided to sacrifice his parents. His guilt is intolerable. He has blocked it out, perhaps by acknowledging he cannot complete Lord Voldemort's task, thereby making it easier to give up all hope. He sees the death of his family as inevitable."

Snape tried again. "There is no way to know when Draco shall carry out the task."  
>"It comes down to logic, to simple mathematics," Dumbledore said. "Draco Malfoy is a clever boy. The children leave for summer holiday in eight days. Voldemort will want an audience to my death. Moreover, he thrives on fear - who better to garner fear from than young, innocent children?"<p>

"They are far from being children," Snape said, referring really to the sixth and seventh years. "They are-"

"_CHILDREN_!" Dumbledore emphasised this, angrily. "They are _children_, Severus. Harry Potter is a child. Draco Malfoy is a child." He drew in a deep breath, unconciously rubbing his blackened, dying hand with his other. "Severus, look at me." Dumbledore waited for Snape to obey. "_Pansy Parkinson_ is a child - a child whose parents were found rolled up in fancy rugs, dead in their own home. Dead by the Death Eaters' hands. As her head of house, how could you possibly not know this?" He put up his hand, stopping Snape from interrupting. "When I first met you, you were a child, too. Oh, Severus, what terrible choices children sometimes make. Terrible, terrible choices."

Snape said nothing.

"You know this castle - this school - as they say, like the back of your hand. There is not a nook or cranny that you have not inspected as a cartographer might." Dumbledore's voice was severe. "You know very well the sentient nature of this place. Surely you could not believe I would not find out you have involved yourself with a student."

At that moment Snape didn't care. He was caught. He steepled his fingers and rested them under his chin as he held Dumbledore's gaze.

"If I did not need you so specifically I would have no choice but to let you go." Dumbledore considered Snape sharply. "Why, Severus?"

Snape rose. "There is nothing to discuss." He couldn't bring himself to utter the ever cheesy one-liner: _It's over_.

There was seven days left in the school year and Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy were inseparable. They sat mashed together at all meals; sometimes Pansy would pop a bit of biscuit or scone into Draco's waiting mouth, and he would smile at her like she was the most precious creature in the world. He held her hand as they conducted their prefect rounds and made her laugh with silly magic tricks.

Snape knew this because he was watching Pansy and Malfoy. Masking himself within the shadows of the dungeons, he crept silently along, taking note of their whereabouts, their interactions, their conversations. Severus hated himself for it; he was not one for romanticism or to woo from afar. In fact, he followed her because he hated her and he had always kept his enemies under close watch. He hated her silky flaxen hair, her oddly upturned nose, the way she wore her uniform all sloppy and rumpled and unkempt. She was smart enough to learn ironing charms, but to do so would be beneath her; she wasn't the only Slytherin with this attitude and, as head of Slytherin House, it often infuriated Snape to see his lot so disheveled at meals or in class. He had approached Dumbledore about procuring a pair of house elves for Slytherin, but the headmaster had declined his request based on perceived favoritism.

Returning to the matter at hand, though, Snape hated Pansy most of all because she hated him more.

Every night he brought her to his office and ordered that she should sit in the wingback chair opposite his desk. She either said nothing for the entire evening or she fell asleep upright. When he let her go, Draco was always waiting for her in the corridor - waiting to escort her back to the dungeons.

Severus even tried an old trick that he knew she had liked. While the class was hunched over their exams, Snape incanted the spell silently: _Legilimens_.

"_Protego_!" The class startled and looked up. Snape had never seen her respond so quickly with a counterspell; she was not particularly brilliant with her wandwork. All he had glimpsed within her was snowy white nothingness. He stared at her and she held his gaze and Snape wondered if she had seen anything inside of him. Where had she learnt occlumency? It wasn't taught at Hogwarts and Snape couldn't begin to imagine where- ah. Yes. His gaze shifted to Malfoy; the boy smirked, and then bent back over his parchment

Severus walked silently so it was no surprise that two days before school was to break for holiday he caught Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy in the Slytherin common room at three in the morning. Snape hadn't been able to sleep. It was practically dark, with only the dimmest of torches burning in the corridors leading into the common room. Severus stopped and once again folded himself into the darkness and watched as Draco and Pansy, mere silhouettes, silently touched each other and kissed one another more tenderly than Severus might have expected. They fumbled around, moving, until Draco was on top of her and within minutes Severus heard a muffled cry of pain, and then Malfoy was breathing hard and tensing up so as not to make more noise than was absolutely necessary, and then the two were very still.

"I love you, Draco . . ." It was barely audible. Malfoy said something back, but too quietly for Severus to hear. An angry burning sensation gnawed at his insides. As he turned to leave, he tripped over a metal puzzle box that some careless child had left on the common room floor.

"Did you hear something?" Draco whispered.

"I heard it!"

"What is it?"

"I don't know!"

"Give me my-"

"I've got it." Pansy moved around, then abruptly stood. Her arm slashed downward toward the general direction of the noise. "_Abnocto Timor_!"

Snape found himself undone by his own spell. He felt a painful, sickening tug behind his navel as his body began closing in on itself until he was a whirling mass of gangly limbs and black robes. Then, the whirlpool inverted and Severus was sucked from the room, as if swallowed by a massive black hole.

He was spat out into the Restricted Section; immediately the books began honking in protest.

"Quiet!" Snape hissed. The books ceased their clamouring at once - only because he was an instructor - although they continued to mutter amongst themselves as Snape quickly picked the lock with his wand. The Restricted Section was impervious to magic from midnight to six. Never in a million years would he admit to using a Muggle trick or two to get out of a tight spot. Lily had-

_Go back to your morgue_. He sneered at the memory of her. Lily, Lily - the angel of nightmares.

The next day Severus received an owl.

_I shall require you tonight. Be prepared. Do not forget the promise you have made._

Four o'clock found Snape stalking through a large, fenced off hectare of land, on his way to the furthestmost greenhouses in order to collect several specimins for Dumbledore.

"Why not Firewhiskey? Or a good port?" Snape had asked, not wanting to be bothered by collecting, well, special herbs and plants on Albus's whim. Not to mention it was highly illegal.

"Indulge me, Severus," Dumbledore had said, smiling slightly. "I admit my nerves are not as steady as they were a year ago, when we first discussed tonight's happenings."

Dumbledore scared? Impossible. He was just being daft.

"I'm certain the matron Pomfrey would have-"

"Severus." It was not a request.

"Yes, Headmaster."

And so here he was, making his way across the windy moor, its tall, dry grasses whipping and cutting at his hands; he came to a fenced off area and began to walk its perimeter, for he knew it led straight to the greenhouses, but then he heard someone crying. Severus stood there for several moments and then, God knows why, doubled back.

Malfoy was leaning against a thick rail, crying in that weird, awkward way that boys cry when they don't know how to. Severus came up beside Draco and stood there, arms crossed.

"Mr. Malfoy."

"Fecking hells!" Draco burst out, sniveling into the crook of his elbow. "How far do I have go to get left alone? No one ever comes out here! Just leave me the fuck alone."

"Mr. Malfoy." Snape continued as if Draco had never spoken. "What do you see?"

"What do you mean what do I see?" The boy was still crying and it was beginning to make Severus feel uncomfortable in a way that was different from his usual disdain. "I don't see _anything_ anymore."

"Look up and tell me what you see."

"Go fuck your-"

"LOOK UP _RIGHT NOW_ AND _SEE_!" Severus buried the tip of his wand in Draco's jawline, drawing him up. He shoved the boy against the rails of the fence. "What do you see?"

Draco, snuffling, put his hand up to shield his eyes. "I-I see the moor."

"Be more specific."

"I, uh, I see heather?"

"Do you or do you not?" Snape asked. "This is not a guessing game."

"I see heather. And gorse."

"What else?"

"I see a willow tree, but it's far away."

"How do you know it's a willow?"

Draco snuffled again. "It's weeping," he said in a tight voice, as if trying not to cry himself. "I see three big boulders, troughs, some kind of a shack-" Draco's voice sounded more normal now. "-what's that shack for?"

"What do you see just behind us?"

Draco looked. "The Forbidden Forest."

"Have you visited since your first year?"

"A couple of times." The boy sounded proud.

"Inside the shack is extra Herbology tools," Snape said. "There is a large, metal watering tin, painted pink. It is a portkey. What else do you see?"

"A portkey?"

"I, for example, also see a gate." Snape flicked his wand in the gate's general direction. "This fence is folly, however. Easily jumped."

"I see the sky - look, what's this rubbish about, anyway?"

"Is the color pleasing to you?"

"If I were a baby's arse!"

"In Knockturn Alley there is a walk-up near to the Piss and Vinegar shoppe-"

"That's a keen shoppe." Draco snuffled again.

"You'll miss it I'm sure. As I was saying," Snape said, exasperated, "there is a bell on the door of the walk-up; the bell is tied by a ribbon of that color." He again turned his wand toward the sky.

"In Knockturn Alley?" Draco wrinkled his nose. "How inappropriate."

"Be that as it may, there are useful people and useful things behind the door with the sky blue ribbon. Do you see anything else?"

"A bird."

"How do know it's a bird?"

"It's flying in the sky!" Draco rolled his eyes. "And it has wings?"

"Does it frighten you?"

"No!"

"Fortunate. There is no need to fear winged creatures - even the worst looking kind. Do you see anything else?"

Draco stood looking out over the moor. "No," he said, finally. "No."

"You shall now return to your house," Snape said coldly. "Put your affairs in order."

"I don't-"

"Go now!" Malfoy went and Snape watched him retreat.

He also saw the spiney evergreen shrubs of heather and the dying yellow blankets of gorse. He saw waves of grass, the rails and fencing of the perimeter where he stood, and the weeping willow tree, the latter which he guessed was undoubtedly full of blackbirds. He saw the gate. He saw the shack and the troughs and the blue sky. And he also saw thestrals. Everywhere. Skinless, white-eyed, bat-winged thestrals - hundreds of them. Some were at the troughs, some were walking the fence line. As far as Severus could see, there they were.

With each time, there always came more. More and more thestrals.

His errand for Albus completed, Severus summoned Pansy Parkinson to his office. As usual, she huffed herself in, snide and bitter and roadhard.

"What do _you_ want? If you're truly that thick, then let me be clear! I am not inter-"

"_Imperio_ . . ." He barely had to lift his wand.

She looked surprised even as the Unforgivable took hold. Her body relaxed like a sigh, her shoulders slumping forward slightly.

"I remember this," she said dreamily, and she sat down primly in the careworn velvet wingback across from Severus's desk.

"Sit in your normal fashion."

Immediately she was slouched down with one leg slung over the arm of the chair, the other bouncing up and down nervously against the cold, hard stone floor. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at him flatly. "Better?"

"Keep the countenance, Miss Parkinson," he said. "Tell me about your parents."

She began crying immediately, but the tears came silently. "My father's Edmund, my mother Eugenie."

"When did they die?"

"Three-and-a-half weeks ago."

"Why did you not return home?"

"You told me no. You said-" She took a great shuddering breath "-that it didn't matter what I was asking for, that the answer was no."

Snape's mouth twisted into a thoughtful frown. Yes, he recalled. Yes, it was definitely something he would say, especially if tears were involved. His shoulder lifted slightly. "Irregardless, how is it that you - of all people - should move to follow my rules at such a crucial time? Tell the truth."

"I didn't want to go."

"Why not?

"I was afraid."

"Of?"

"The smell."

"The smell of what?

"Death," she said, biting down on her thumbnail.

"How would you know it?" Severus asked. "Do not lie. You may not lie to me tonight."

"When I was nine, my mother and I were shopping in Knockturn Alley. We went all the way to the end 'cos Mum had ordered a special pocket watch for Daddy - it had a Dark Detector built in - and you know how Smith's was rarely open anyway, how it had wonky hours? When we went in, Mr. Smith was dead behind the counter. Later, I overheard Mum telling Daddy that he'd been dead for two weeks! It was _vile_. I-I'll never forget that smell. I have nightmares about it, that dead Mr. Smith is coming after me, all rotten and grey and wormy. And now my parents -" she let out a loud sob "- are exactly the same way!"

Severus found talk of dead people to be tedious. Nevertheless, he ordered, "Tell me more about your parents."

"Um, a weird thing about them, but they're both twins. My dad's brother's Edward and my mum's sister's Aurelie." She paused for a moment. "Montague. Eugenie and Aurelie Montague - that's her side of the family. Oh!" Pansy continued, almost proudly. "We've our own family curse!"

"My my," Severus clucked, leaning back in his chair. "So very upper crust."

"I know, right? Here's how it works. The thirteenth son of the thirteenth son? His children will not survive past infancy. Of course the thirteenth son doesn't want to believe it to be true, he produces a metric arseload of children, trying to-" She made quotey marks in the air with her fingers. "-defeat the fates. It always ends up a horrible mess, with the wife of the thirteenth son languishing in St. Mungo's for respite care!" Pansy took a deep breath. "I should know, 'cos my dad's brother, Edward, is the thirteenth son of the thirteenth son, and he's married to my mum's sister, Aurelie, and they've had eleven children, although one didn't die in infancy." She looked at Snape expectantly. "My cousin Catherine Parkinson."

"Mmm," Snape said noncommittally.

"I want to stay with my aunt and uncle now. Except my auntie's in St. Mungo's in respite and Uncle Edward says he doesn't know how he'll manage me alone, for he spends all his time at St. Mungo's." She looked slightly forlorn. "Their manor is creepy anyway," she said, taking on her usual hautiness. "Although I do wish they'd take me because if your family rejects you even when it's an emergency, then what's that say about a person?" She raised her chin a notch. "Mum and Daddy would've taken Catherine."

"Miss Parkinson, you are seventeen years old. As to your parents, they had no curse to bear."

"Daddy being an Auror was curse enough."

"Indeed."

"They wanted him to pick a side."

"Who did?"

"The Death Eaters!"

"Oh, there's been an arrest made, then?"

"No."

"Why the conclusion?"

"The Death Eaters have been after Daddy for years," she said, forgetting her tense. "They come around, well, frequently and they're always talking at him and Mum, trying to convince them both to join up. They want a Ministry insider."

"I suspect you were not invited to these meetings. Tell me how you know this."

"I hid in the dumbwaiter."

"I hear no convincing evidence that the Death Eaters were directly responsible for your parents' murders." Severus chose to overlook the conversation he had had with Dumbledore regarding Pansy's parents.

She looked at him for a very long time. "There was the Dark Mark, Snape. The Dark Mark! My father was no turncoat. He would have never done something so cowardly as to play both sides."

Snape was silent. His left arm twitched. "Come here," he said, his voice dangerously low. He turned his hand over, indicating his knee. "Sit."

She sat.

"I have told you before - it's _Professor_ Snape."

"Okay."

"Show me your first kiss."

"In a pensieve?" she asked. "Because I don't know how to do memory retrieval yet."

"No," he said, irritated. "_Demonstrate_ your first kiss."

For all of their trysts, Severus had never allowed her to kiss him and she had eventually stopped trying. Here, though, at this moment, she simply slipped her arms around his neck and leaned in. He didn't move.

"You have to help, Professor."

Severus slowly leaned forward and Pansy knocked his forehead with her own, causing him to draw in his breath, and then their noses bumped, and Pansy kissed him very chastely on his mouth. She smelt of Droobles.

"Sorry about the head thing," she said. "But that's what happened."

"How old were you?"

"Thirteen."

"With Draco?"

"Theodore Nott."

"Does Draco know?"

"Nooo!" Pansy shook her head vigorously. "Occlumency."

Severus found this mildly interesting, coming from Malfoy's lapdog. Not in a million years would the boy imagine his girlfriend using the Occlumency he'd taught her against him.

She scooted closer to him, as if getting comfortable. She kept her hands around his neck, but let her elbows drop to rest on his chest.

"What should you like to do next?" Severus asked.

"I should like to go. Can I go?"

"It's not whether you can go, it's whether you _may_ go."

"_May_ I go?"

"No."

"Okay."

"Show me your most recent kiss."

She turned her face up and huffed a little breath into his ear, which was not disgusting. She nuzzled at his ear for a moment and then trailed her lips lightly down the side of his neck and without warning bit down into the skin there, sucking. Severus flinched; it had been unexpected. She slowly released him; her hands moved from behind his neck to the sides of his face. She gripped him lightly and then drew his mouth to hers. She kissed him thoroughly, stopping to breathe several times, and her mouth tasted good, and her tongue felt good, and her lips were pretty and full. She rested her forehead against his, but gently this time. "How was that Snape?"

"From Malfoy?"

"No," she said wryly. "Theodore Nott."

Snape raised an eyebrow.

"You don't see everything, you know."

"Go back and sit down." The tops of his thighs cooled as she slid from his lap, and then there she was, perched in his chair, back straight, shoulders back, legs crossed modestly. He looked at her for a long moment and she smiled. Snape flicked his wand. "_Finite_."

"What do _you_ want? If you're truly that thick, then let me be clear! I am not inter- Ooo!"

Floating between them was Snape's journal, the one that had intrigued her so greatly in the beginning. She made a grab for it and tripped forward, as if surprised that she had actually caught the small, leatherbound book.

"Oh!" She looked delighted, but then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why?"

Snape merely gestured toward the book, inviting her to open it.

"_Alohomora_!" she said warily, remembering the bite from the last time she tried to open it.

"Miss Parkinson, just open the book the old-fashioned way."

"There's nothing in here!" She scowled as she flipped through the thick little book, each turn revealing another pristine, blank page of parchment. "You've enchanted it," she said. "That's not fair!"

Snape slowly drummed his fingers against the arm of his chair. "Take your time."

She had incanted every revealing charm she knew and had even raided his books looking for a solution. Snape watched as she worked; in her concentration she played with her hair until it was slightly mussed and she pulled her tie loose. Finally she threw up her hands. "I don't know." She looked at him, perplexed. "Will you just do it?"

"I will not."

"But you want me to see it!"

"Oh?"

"Right?"

"Miss Parkinson," Severus asked, "why must there be anything in that book at all?"

"What?"

"Why must there be anything at all? Why such enthusiasm to catch inconsequential snippets of thought?"

"It's not inconsequential if you know whose thoughts you're reading!"

"And there is power in that?"

"Absolutely." Pansy looked at him as if he were daft. "Information is power!"

"No," Severus said. "Incorrect. Information is contextual. It is what you _do_ with the information you possess, but do not know the context for, that matters. How do you treat the knowledge you have?"

Pansy was gazing at Severus with interest. She looked down at the little book and closed it gently. Rising, she straightened her skirt and then placed Snape's book on his desk.

"I can't read it, can I?"

"No."

"Maybe there's really nothing in that book," she said haughtily, apparently snubbed.

"Perhaps there is not."

Pansy stared at him for a long moment, crestfallen. "You're not mysterious at all."

Severus lifted his hand and let it settle on the book. He gave it a tap. "Alas."

Abruptly she turned and marched from his office. Severus caught a glimpse of Malfoy at the door, heard the distant _What's wrong? What's going on?_ Pansy didn't look back

_One Year Later_

Dumbledore might have described his charge thusly: Severus Snape was a brilliant man on the wrong side of luck. He would be accused of being heartless and devoid of emotion; however, it was those very things - heart and emotions - that had landed him on the wayside. As a child, Severus made terrible, terrible choices meant only for adults on the whim of desire and yearning - yearning for acceptance, for friendship, for recognition, and, yes, for love. Yet, as a young adult he made the terrible choice to, emotionally, remain a child. He found himself tethered between two factions that used him without appreciation or comaraderie in return. He longed to believe this did not matter. He was bullied and taunted and usurped. In turn, he grew to bully and taunt and take. He lied, deceived, and denied. He picked the wrong master, for cruelty had held great power over him his entire life - he believed that cruelty was power. He frightened. He intimidated. He maimed. He cursed. He killed.

He was never not brave.

On that night, the night that Snape died, he had taken great care. He was not a stupid man and he had honed his intuition finely. The great battle was nigh and, accordingly, Lord Voldemort would have little to no use for him. Dumbledore was dead; Severus was now just another Death Eater. He clearly saw the writing on the wall.

Severus - who cared nothing for his appearance - made an exception that night. He selected his very best robes with a severe button-up collar, and his favorite black trousers, vest, and boots.

He sat at the foot of his bed before he dressed, a small leather book in his hand, with no words on its cream-coloured pages. He laid it on the bed and waved his wand over the book slowly, in a circular motion, and began incanting several ancient revealing charms, coaxing the years' worth of words from the seemingly empty pages. Every centimetre was covered with Snape's even scroll - spells, potions, charms, uses for magical creatures, very dark magic, drawings, blueprints, the occasional thought or snippet of an idea.

None of this was what he was after.

"_Specialis Revelio_." The book shimmered and shook, and then stretched and strained until Severus heard a distant sighing sound - as if someone who had been holding their breath released it with relief - and the book transformed . . . into a shirt.

Severus picked up the aged garment. It had yellowed with age, but it was clean. It was the colour of clean parchment, the colour of the untouched pages in a journal. It was a strange smock-like shirt, far too big for a young boy of eleven. It was adult-sized; his mother had picked it up from a charity shoppe when he had been ten. Of all things to choose! Snape had begged and pleaded with his mother - _Mum, don't make me wear this_! - but Eileen Prince Snape was not the kind of mother to look beyond practicalities. _You'll wear it and you'll be grateful_, she had said. _It'll give you plenty of room to grow_. He had hated her for it.

However.

He had survived this far. He - the boy in the odd smock - had made it through the bullying, the taunting, the terrible choices, and had successfully fooled the darkest and one of the most brilliant wizards ever known into believing in Snape's allegiance. He, too, had become a brilliant wizard, despite all the obstacles.

Lily Evans had been the only student who had never commented on his smock. She simply had not cared. And that had mattered so much that Snape had loved her painfully for it

Severus pulled on his smock, touching his wand here and there to ensure an acceptable fit. Over the smock went a buttondown and his vest, then on went the trousers and boots, and then his severe black robes.

He pocketed his wand. He did not need to look around one last time; all his affairs were in order. Besides, he had never really cared for Spinner's End.

After Pansy Parkinson had unsuccessfully attempted to rat out Harry Potter and the entire school had held her at wandpoint, and McGonagall had ordered her to lead all of Slytherin House back to the dungeons, she had been unable to find Draco. She went from housemate to housemate: _Do you know where Draco is_? _Have you seen Draco anywhere_? She was too frightened to leave the dungeons, lest someone from one of the other houses hex or curse her. Shortly, she found herself huddled up with her friends.

"Blaise," Millicent was saying, "what if it's a trick?" The girl caught sight of Pansy. "Good show out there. That went well."

"God!" Pansy said, rolling her eyes. "I was trying to help!"

Blaise ignored them. "It's about being on the right side - the winning side. Do you honestly think Harry Potter is going to defeat a great, brilliant wizard like Voldemort?"

"Draco says Potter always gets what he goes after." Pansy said. "That he's got dumb luck."

Theodore snorted. "It's 'dumb luck' that Potter beats Draco in every duel? Sour grapes much?"

"Theo!" Pansy huffed, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Cut it out, Nott. She's a lost cause, mate." Blaise said bemusedly.

"Nothing's a lost cause 'til you're dead and buried!"

"Pansy," Astoria said, touching Pansy's arm lightly, "Daphne and I think we ought to go home. They've a passageway from the school to some pub in Hogsmeade, and then we can go from there. I heard they've even got the train ready." The younger girl was remarkably calm. "Shouldn't we go home? Wouldn't you want to?"

Pansy thought of the recent events in her home. "No," she said. "Not- no."

"You could come with Daphne and me. We've plenty of room."

"That's good of you-"

"I'm staying," Blaise said. "Figure I've got a better chance out there than in here-" He looked pointedly at Pansy. "- thanks to your antics!"

"Blaise, stop being a prat," Astoria said. "Like you weren't thinking the same thing?"

Daphne came up, her face white and pinched. "They've closed off the portrait! There's no way out of here now."

"Look," Theo said, putting his hand up. "Here's what we're going to do." He glanced around. "I know another way out . . . "

They made their way from the castle slowly and carefully, as the word had spread that all Slytherins were being hexed and jinxed on sight, owing to Pansy's absolutely idiotic manoeuver in the Great Hall. The six of them moved especially cautiously. Hoods up, wands out, they crept toward the entrance hall, stopping frequently to listen and look for danger, and then they had to stop once while Astoria was sick from the gruesome sight of a dead and armless body of a Ravenclaw they reached the entrance hall they flattened themselves against the shadows and crept silently out the main doors of the castle. Once outside, they ran until their lungs burned and their sides ached, following the tree line of the Forbidden Forest toward the direction of Hagrid's hut.

"Stop!" Millicent ground to a halt. "The Whomping Willow's there! We'll never get by it."

"You're right," Theo said, panting. He dropped his head and put his hands on his knees, catching his breath. "That's exactly where we're going."

"Are you barking?" Millicent asked, her eyes widening.

"There's a tunnel under the Whomping Willow," Theo said. "It leads to Hogsmeade."

"Yes, but how will we get the tree to stay still long to get into the tunnel?" Astoria asked.  
>"Can you do <em>Lumos Maximus<em> yet, Astoria?" Theo asked.

"I can, yes."

"On the count of three, you lot will do _Lumos Maximus_ and I'll do _Expositus_ at the knot on the trunk." Theodore happened to be excellent at dueling and wand work. "As soon as the tree stops moving, _run_ for the trunk. I'm sure you all know what part to go to. Ready? Daphne, count off . . ."

"One . . . Two . . . _Three_!" Daphne whispered loudly, and the five Slytherins incanted _Lumos Maximus_ and in a split second a jet of white light erupted from Theo's wand and hit the knot on the trunk dead on. The willow froze immediately.  
>"Good show. Let's go!"<p>

They bolted for the opening in the roots of the tree and scampered down into the tunnel. Theo led the way while Blaise brought up the rear, the four girls in between. They all had their wands at the ready, "_Lumos_ . . ." Theo incanted.

Pansy recoiled as the light illuminated various insects and creepy-crawlies writhing on the tunnel's walls. "Hurry!" she pleaded, catching up to Theo and prodding him in the back with her wand.

It seemed that they walked forever, but finally the trapdoor to the Shrieking Shack came into view. "_Expositus_!" The trapdoor flew open and Pansy ran ahead and clambored up and out of the tunnel into the Shrieking Shack.

"We should make sure no one's here," Blaise whispered, lifting his wand and turning in a slow circle, looking around.

"Daphne and I will check upstairs," said Millicent. "It doesn't seem like there's anyone here."

They all stood for several minutes, listening; the silence was palpable.

"Pansy, can you check the front room?" Theo asked.

"All right." Her insides were quaking. Undoubtedly they had missed the train and Pansy knew it would be a choice between the Shrieking Shack for the night, or to risk returning to Hogwarts with Lord Voldemort, the Death Eaters, the Phoenix people, and all of the school - who hated the Slytherins - to deal with.

"Blaise, I'll go with you. We can check the back rooms," said Astoria. "_Lumos_."

Pansy crept toward the front room. As soon as she entered it she felt a terrible sensation wash over her - the remnants of dark magic. The shutters were closed tight, making it even darker. The fireplace was cold and unlit. Pansy turned in a circle, stepping backwards. Unexpectedly, she slammed into a large object on the floor. Tripping, she fell straight onto her arse.

She felt cloth and something pliable. Scooting back over the object, she flipped over onto her hands and knees. Immediately, she felt a cold wetness and she lifted her hand and by the light of her wand stared at the blood drenched there. Shaking, she extended her wand and shined the light upward, following the edges of the blood pool.

The blood covered her hands, her legs, her robes, her shoes . . . She lifted her wand further. Black robes. Pale hands. A neck ripped open and a face the colour of chalk. A hooked nose and black eyes open and unseeing, the white, useless remnants of uncaptured memories caking the mouth, the nose, the ears . . .

_Professor Snape_.

She couldn't even scream. "Oh no!" She began crying immediately. "No, no, no, no!" She moved to pick him up, to cradle him, but his dead weight was too much and her hands were slick with his blood, and in the end all she could do was let her hands and face fall onto his chest where she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

She felt an object within the confines of Snape's robes; it rubbed coarsely at her cheek. Still shaking, she straightened, and then struggled to work the buttons to open his robes and shirt. She slipped her hand through his robes and inside his shirt and found the small, leatherbound journal, and as she held it she stained it with blood. She held the journal - now brimming with visible words and pictures and thoughts - to her chest, and she rocked back and forth, crying so hard she began to hyperventilate.

She barely noticed when Theo was suddenly there. He held her from behind and rocked with her and kissed the top of her head. The light from her wand slowly extinguised; they were left alone in the sick, strange darkness. "Shh, shh," he said, stroking her hair, leaving crimson streaks of blood there. "Shh, Pansy. Hush . . ."

- Finite -


End file.
